George St-Pierre’s Lawyer Says UFC Contract Is Like Slavery
Earlier this week former longtime 170-pound king Georges St-Pierre shockingly announced that his lawyers managed to terminate his contract with the UFC. Shortly after, however, the UFC responded by claiming the Canadian star is still under Zuffa contract.
Who better to clear up the situation than St-Pierre’s lawyer, James Quinn, of New York firm Weil, Gotshal and Manges? Quinn spoke to MMA Fighting to discuss the situation, stating that he was ‘blown away’ by the language in ‘GSP’s’ contract:
“I’ve done a lot of work in sports. When I read that contract, I was blown away by how restrictive it is,” Quinn said.
“They’re basically tying him up for life. They have no rights and they own all of his licensing and all the other things. It’s unheard of in the other professional sports. And they won’t get away with it forever.”
Quin, who has taken and won cases against major sports organizations such as the NFL and NBA, stated that the language in St-Pierre’s contract was so restrictive that any other sports organization wouldn’t get away with a contract of that manner:
“You couldn’t get away with any old contract in any of the other sports,” Quinn said. “There is litigation in that aspect of a class-action lawsuit that challenges the contract as being illegal under the NHS laws. That case is ongoing, and I think that under the law’s terms, I don’t think the contract — that formal contract — is likely to stand up. Not in today’s world. It’s a pretty nice form of slavery.”
Furthermore, Quinn stated that the contract terminated after the UFC failed to make the 10-day deadline mandated by ‘GSP’ to for the UFC to give him a fight:
“He notified them earlier this year that he was ready to fight again,” Quinn said. “He wanted to arrange for the terms of the fight, and that did not happen in a timely fashion. They were required to actually schedule a fight, the time and place with a bout agreement, and we gave them — because there’s a 10-day notice period in the contract, in the old contract — we gave them the 10 days to do that, and they didn’t do it before the time period. And therefore we terminated the contract.”
A fight with the now-former UFC welterweight champion Robbie Lawler was then offered to St-Pierre, however, that was just after Lawler had pulled out of his scheduled contest with Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone at UFC 205:
“They offered the fight at a time when Lawler had said he was unable to fight,” Quinn said. “We take the position that we believe the contract has been terminated. They have their hand, we have our hand, we’ll see how it plays out. Georges still wants to fight and he’s perfectly happy to fight under a new UFC contract, if we can negotiate one. Or if not, he’ll look at other options.”
Although the two sides may be going through a rough patch, Quinn says his client isn’t against returning back to the negotiation table to hash out a new deal:
“It’s really up to the UFC, whether they’re willing to negotiate another contract or not,” Quinn said. “We’ll have to see. I can’t really predict that.”
Earlier this week St-Pierre stated that it was “up to guys like me, Conor McGregor, Anderson Silva, Jose Aldo, guys that are big names” to take the lead in a stance for fighters’ rights:
“That’s eventually going to happen in this sport as well, whether in the context of Georges’ situation or with the other litigation that’s pending,” Quinn said. “We just have to see how it all plays out. I’m not in the prediction business.”
At this point fight fans must begin to start wondering if we will ever see the Canadian phenom fight under the UFC banner again, but only time will tell.
